


In Rememberance

by TheBaronVonSteuben



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, F/M, M/M, this is pretty bad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-15
Updated: 2017-04-15
Packaged: 2018-10-19 03:40:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10631403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheBaronVonSteuben/pseuds/TheBaronVonSteuben
Summary: After a death and after a rebirth one can only remember their past life when they see the one they loved in that past life. When a mix-up happens, it can be all too disastrous for everyone involved, including the first treasury secretary, Alexander Hamilton.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [leidilaurens](https://archiveofourown.org/users/leidilaurens/gifts).



> Just a quick disclaimer: I wrote most of this in the first two weeks, but the ending is very short because life got in the way and I had to rush through it. In the future I might rewrite this fic and publish it to my dash. Also, I'm not too used to writing modern-day AU setting-- I enjoy writing historical Lams, so a lot of the characterizations might be inaccurate, not good, etc. And, you know, I'm not an econ major, so I have no idea what the modern day treasurer would normally do. I basically BS-ed my way through it, so it's probably not the most accurate. Also it's in present-tense, which felt really weird writing it, so I hope it's not weird reading it. Hope it's okay! :)

It is a morning in early December when he starts to remember. 

The day before, he wakes early, too early, even for him, moving quietly so as not to disturb the sleeping form of Eliza in the bed next to him. He stays close to the wall when going downstairs, feeling the throbbing underneath his eyes, and begins going through his email at the countertop. His breakfast is only a bland mix of coffee made in a French press and then it is back up the stairs (close to the wall) to the bedroom. 

When he arrives, turning the door handle slowly and silently and pushing it open, he finds Eliza already awake. She's propped up in bed on one elbow, anticipating him, and raises her head to meet his eyes. “Good morning, my dearest,” she says softly. 

“Good morning,” he replies. 

She holds his gaze, already able to tell that it's another one of those days, when he hungers to find more about who he used to be. “You… You are not usually up this early,” she says, reaching to her left to take her laptop off of its charging cable. 

“I couldn't sleep,” he says, entirely truthful for once. 

Eliza lifts the computer’s screen and powers it on. Her fingers fly over the touchpad and she almost refuses to meet his eyes. She knows why he couldn't sleep. She knows why he can’t remember her. 

He takes a long, hot shower before getting dressed, and when he comes out Eliza looks up from the laptop at him. She smiles and clears her throat, obviously uncomfortable with the silence that had been plaguing her husband since they had met. “William Shakespeare Surfaced last night, according to the New York Post.”

A dry laugh emanates from him, rattling against his ribs. Can she see the irony? “In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,” he recites. “Who was he before?”

“Get this,” Eliza says. “A journalist in El Salvador.”

“And his wife?”

“It doesn't say… All the article says is that Mr. Shakespeare and Mrs. Hathaway are moving back to London, where Mr. Shakespeare will continue being a playwright.”

“Hmm,” he says. And pauses. “I'm off.” He moves around to the other side of the bed to kiss Eliza’s forehead. 

“Do well today, my Alexander,” Eliza says, clutching his hand to her chest. He stills; she hesitates. Then, taking her hand in his, he quickly loosens her fingers, strides out of the room and down the stairs (loudly thundering down the middle), sweeps his tablet off the countertop to under his arm, and leaves the house to hail a cab. 

Some part of him knows it was who he was before. Alexander Hamilton. He'd Googled pictures of the first treasury secretary before taking the job as the fifty-fifth, only to find he looked nothing like the man. This was to be expected: in the taxi he reads the same story Eliza had read to him earlier. William Shakespeare looked almost the exact opposite of what he looked like nearly 500 years ago as a first-generation birth. But when he looked in the mirror the last thing he sees is the young artillery captain who had commanded Washington’s attention, or the thirty-two old sitting next to Benjamin Franklin at the Constitutional Convention, or the man felled like a tree on a morning in Weehawken in 1804.

The cab stops. He pays the driver, hastily shuffles his computer into his messenger bag, and hops out. Before him amidst the traffic and early morning mist stands the treasury building. A pang of longing for something hits him when he sees the bronze statue of Hamilton in front of it. He'd seen that statue every other day, and every day he felt that same tug towards something-- someone. He viewed the statue with a detachment that couldn't possibly be considered reverence, taking into account the fact that that man was probably him.

His first line of work is found in budgeting-- budget cuts administered after a House debate have to be regulated in some way-- and then he goes up to his office to monitor the country's fiscal reserves after the cuts were put into place. The day closes with his secretary, a peasant named James Shaffield from the fifteenth century, delivering the news that the treasurer is supposed to speak at the Daily White House Press Briefing the next day. He'd have to prepare a speech alongside the tension at home. And this summoning could not have come at a worse time. The results of the day’s monitoring yielded nothing--the market was simply too unpredictable at this moment in time to conclude anything. And that is what he'll say in his speech. 

When he arrived home, dinner was quiet. Eliza was back from her the law firm where she worked, and usually she dominated the conversation with talk of legal mishaps or something to that extent. But today’s dinner is silent. He knows something had shifted that morning: she did not, had not, called him “Alexander.” Not since the very day she approached him grinning, but soon disappointed at his inability to remember her.

They go to bed strangely silent, saddened, and neither satisfied.

He takes an official government vehicle to the White House at eight the following morning. He’d prepared his speech, it was revised by Shaffield, and in the back of the SUV he reads it over again, reviewing it in his head.

President Washington greets him when he comes in. The president’s eyes crinkle at the corners, as they always do around his Treasury Secretary, though he does not smile. Apparently the negative stigma surrounding his sealed mouth and terrifying chompers travels from one life to the next.

Washington’s main negative point when being elected was that he hadn’t Surfaced yet, and that he would be the only president besides Buchanan and Cleveland to enter the White House unmarried. In the middle of his first year, though, he met his Martha at a dinner, and they were married within two years. The fact that he had Surfaced, however, dragged up more allegations against him: he was already a former president, and had already served two terms. Legally, he had to step down. The presidency then went to Vice President Claremont, a first-gen life. Washington’s case went to the Supreme Court; he won the landmark case and the law changed.

That was when, a year and a half ago, Jayshree Madhiva (a Nepalese doctor in the early 1900s), the previous Secretary of the Treasury, stepped down. In her place was him.

He shakes Secretary of State Jefferson’s hand on the way on the way into the Briefing Room. Jefferson was also a late arrival, only having Surfaced four or five months before, and wanted to pursue government again in this life, as he had in past. 

The Treasury Secretary, on the other hand, now stands and speaks at the podium which usually holds Oliver Wolcott, Jr., the Press Secretary. He fields questions and dodges discussions and leaves with only a “Thank you” and not another word.

“Mr. Secretary,” Washington says as he leaves, cornering him.

“Yes?”

“Would you care to join me in my office? I’d like to discuss something with you, if you don’t mind.”

“Of course, not at all.”

So join the president he does. He leans against the back of the chair across from Washington in the Oval Office and watches the president organize his papers for a bit. Finally Washington speaks.

“How long has it been since you’ve slept?”

The Secretary does a double take. “I’m sorry, sir?”  
Washington shuffles his papers again. “You usually are on top of everything. You usually enjoy speaking to and arguing with the reporters. What--” the papers ruffle-- “is the matter with you?” 

“I have been sleeping perfectly fine, sir,” the Treasurer lies.

Washington smacks his folders on the desk, pointing his entire hand at the secretary. “I can tell when you’re lying, always have. This is a matter that, although personal in nature to you, concerns me and the wellbeing of our country entirely.”

“I doubt it,” retorts the secretary, and, hyperaware of his mistake, “I assure you, Mr. President, I’m perfectly capable of overseeing my own--”

President Washington flaps his hand exasperatedly. “Oh, I don’t doubt it.” He adds under his breath, “Oh, you are Hamilton, don’t I know it. Mr Secretary. Take a break.”

“Sir!”

“That’s an order. Don’t you forget I am also commander-in-chief. I have the entire army under my belt-- several armies, in fact.” Washington leans back. “And believe me when I say I’ll call ‘em all in if you don’t. Take. The day. Off.” His fingers taps against the mahogany for each individual word.

“Sir,” the secretary objects loudly. “Now is the worst time you could order me to take-- the market could collapse in an instant and I wouldn’t be there to monitor damage control-- the press’d go wild-- sir, the implications of what could happen if I’m not there are much greater than any perceived risks I would be exposed to-- this is serious, Mr. President, Sir-- we as an administration have never taken such forward fiscal responses to the market and we need to know how the country reacts-- I can’t, really, with all due respect, just take the day--”

President Washington’s eyes crinkle at the corners. He doesn’t smile. “You can, and you will. Listen to me: are you aware of how many sick or vacation days you have stocked up? I don’t even know if it’s legal for you to work this long time without some kind of recession.” He leans in, winded a bit. “You will get sick, son. And as my most useful secretary--” the corners of his eyes fold like a paper airplane and he clears his throat-- “I can’t have that. Take one day off instead of working yourself to death and taking a week.”

The Treasurer stays silent for a minute, fiddling with his cufflinks. This seems like an unreasonable, unjustifiable cession to the President. He’d even be willing to speak with Secretary Jefferson about taking this debate to the Senators in the House…. He would not proceed lightly with this, not when there were things to be done and fiscal properties to observe. Jefferson would do it, having no proof that the treasurer was, in fact, Hamilton (those who’d Surfaced from the eighteenth century confirmed that their spats in the cabinet were indeed legendary), and knowing how influential the secretary could be to Washington. Yes, he would ask Jefferson the next time he saw the State Secretary.

But then he was reminded how much an action like that would remind his colleagues that, for all intents and purposes, he really, truly is Alexander Hamilton.

“Yeah, okay,” he says.

“Good! Finally. We’ll keep things in shape while you’re gone.” President Washington allows himself a soft, small, subtle smile. “Or, at least, we’ll try to. I’ll give you a call if anything of any importance happens.”

“Thank you,” says the secretary, already on his way out.

He catches a cab to a plaza in the suburbs surrounding Washington proper. The area has significance to him-- when Eliza had first attempted to go on a perfectly normal date with him, she had taken him to this plaza. She’d proclaimed that the coffee shop at the corner of Sisca and Panzanella brewed the best coffee on Planet Earth. Several trips to the shop itself proved that accusation correct.

Eliza.

He sits at the table closest to the street and watches the cars go by.

“You know me,” she said. “Please.”

“I’m sorry,” was his response. “I’ve never seen you before in my life.”

“No,” she said, and he thought for a moment she might cry. Instead she only looked angrier, like he was playing some cruel trick on her, but he’s not.

He can’t remember her.

She loved him.

“I’m Eliza,” she said, voice detached from her body. “And you’re Alexander.” He didn’t reply for a few seconds.

“No, I’m sorry. I’m the Treasury Secretary, ya know, if that matters… uh, it probably doesn’t. I’m sorry, haha, I’m just kind of nervous… I don’t… know you?” Her hand flew to her mouth, and he knew that then she would cry, and he would be in trouble. “Uh, but I can help you find Alexander….” He looked behind him for a man running over-- maybe she looked at him on accident whilst looking for someone else. No such luck. “What was his last name? Maybe we can Google him or something… I don’t know.”

“Hamilton,” she said. She blinked fast. “Your name is Hamilton. I….” She was dazed, looking like she might fall unconscious, but still she muttered, “Justice shall be done to the memory of my Hamilton.”

She absentmindedly fumbled in her purse, retrieving a slip of paper that looked like it had been printed ages ago. It was especially made, it appeared, just in case she ever Surfaced, and had all her contact information on it. And, she had. She held it out to him, meeting his eyes, gasping, and turned away, dropping the paper, running from him, and left him alone and confused.

If he was tasked with loving her after death, he certainly failed. How is he to remember her if he couldn’t sum up the courage to love her, in this life or any other? He hasn’t studied Hamilton enough to know if he truly loved Eliza. How is he or anyone else to know?

He turns his head to the street again, the bangs on the sides of his forehead swinging forward in the wind. A protest is being organized in the plaza. Shouts make their way over from across the way. It’s only a few minutes before local police enforcement is involved, and the general noise of the area becomes almost unbearable.

Someone off to his left mutters, “Oh, they do this every time.” He turns to them, awaiting further information. The woman who’d spoken meets his eyes and glances away, accepting him into the conversation, continuing in a light, jovial tone. “They call ‘emselves ‘To the Stars.’ Some peace organization or something, but,” she pauses, sipping her tea, “sometimes their protests get a bit rowdy.”

Right. The Secret Service would have his head if he was injured at a protest. He begins organizing his things, then he throws his trash away, and then orders another coffee and starts walking out.

One of the protesters shoves past him into the shop, a smirk on his face, wide-eyed, and orders a regular black coffee. His foot taps against the linoleum while he waits, and once his order’s done he stands outside, chugs the scalding drink, throws the cup into the trash, and hurls himself back into the fray. He’s turned around somehow by the throng of people, and that’s when his gaze meets the Treasury Secretary’s.

It is a morning in early December when he starts to remember. 

A breeze flutters by his ear, the coffee in his cup is no longer warm, and he wonders how long he’s been staring at the stranger.

Get it together, Hamilton, he thinks. 401k. New Deal. Tax returns.

John Laurens.

A breath catches in his throat. He stands up, heart suddenly racing like a horse’s on a battlefield, hands shaking and sweating, and tosses his half-empty coffee cup in the trash.

The other man holds his gaze, then blinks, looks down, and falls over. He’d tripped over someone’s foot and been pushed over. He stands shakily and tries to pick himself out of the crowd. He swings his head around and again looks at Alexander Hamilton.

Alexander Hamilton is about to have heart palpitations in a coffee shop. He realizes now why the verb for remembering one’s past life is “Surfacing.” It feels, when he looks at this stranger who isn’t strange, like he is coming above the surface of an ocean he hadn’t known he was in.The water laps at his neck and threatens to pull him under again, but he can see the stars-- he can see John Laurens-- and he starts swimming to shore.

He knows that memories will come unhinged and will perhaps entirely overwhelm him. He has to get the two of them away from here-- where?

The first one comes lightning-quick. A kiss, soft and light. He can’t see it (he thinks in the memory his eyes are closed) but he can feel it. The person who kisses him pulls back. Eyelashes featherdust his cheeks and he opens his eyes. A smile against the sunlight. It’s Laurens. He pulls their joined hands between them, sunlight reflecting inside the hollow strands of his blond hair. His eyes are the color of the atmosphere on a crystal clear day. Different from now. He speaks, and his voice is entirely disconnected. “Next life,” he says. It’s strange. “Next life. Hamilton, listen, this is absolutely necessary. I do not wish to lose you again.”

“I… yes? Me neither, losing you would perhaps be the biggest mistake I could ever make. A folly of man, love is.” Hamilton’s own words, spoken through his memory, jars his chest and leaves an ache. 

“Then listen. We should have something we say, perhaps?”

“Say? For what purpose?”

“To identify each other.”

“I do not think it functions that way.”

“What?”

“I mean, have you listened to Meade? All his romantic stories are about how he and his wife knew each other in life and in death.”

A smirk. “Why are you listening to Meade’s absurd stories?”

“Oh, John, you must know that we will know each other. We have to.”

The intoxicating color of their coats in the afternoon sun. A breeze riffling the folds of their collars. 

“I sure hope so.”

He takes his first step toward Laurens. Memories come unbidden. It’s like someone had run a movie of Hamilton’s life through a woodchipper and and is now trying to play it. He sees Laurens, arched over a portable writing desk, strands of hair falling dangerously close to the candle that illuminated the shadows of his face. He sees Washington and Lafayette beneath a tree after Monmouth, and Lafayette, his Lafayette, with a musket ball through his leg in Brandywine. He sees his Report on Manufactures as well as the papers for his Society for Establishing Useful Manufactures. He sees the hurricane violently tear boats in the harbor to shreds. He sees Henry Knox in the president’s cabinet. He sees his mother next to him in a bed soaked with all sorts of bodily effluvia, and he hears her chest, pressed against his ear, stop beating, a clock finally broken. He sees the gilded statue of George III fall in the square, his shining face caving into the cobblestones. He sees Ned Stevens, face wrought with worry (“We aren’t… related, are we?”) He sees Hugh Knox, exorbitant when reading his hurricane letter, running off to the post office. And he sees stars when he hears of John Laurens’ death.

Every step he takes toward Laurens brings a new memory, a new face, a new date. December 14, 1780, versus December 14, 1799. Both incredibly bittersweet for extremely different reasons. Eliza. Tench Tilghman. Nathaniel Pendleton. James Callendar. 

Oh, God-- Eliza.

He walks right past John Laurens.

John turns, surprised, only to find Alexander’s hand clutching the collar of his shirt and tugging him out of the plaza. “Alexander,” he says helplessly.

Alexander walks faster, winded, mind surging, the waves on an open ocean. “Whom?”

John pants, grabbing at Hamilton’s hand. “Stop; slow down-- oh, my God, Alexander!”

Hamilton keeps walking, hand now attached firmly to the small of John’s back, until they end in a back alley. A sense of dizziness overtakes him, and he stares up at the the skyscrapers until his eyes hurt.

He thinks, I made all of this.

He thinks, Oh, my GOD.

He thinks, What am I doing?

Oh, right. John Laurens.

“John,” he says, and can’t form a single word after that.

He looks so different.

Instead of dirty blond hair and eyes the color of sapphires in the sea under a clear cerulean sky, his hair is wavy and falls down around his face in ringlets and is the color of the soil upon which new things grow. His eyes are wide open, shocked, stunned, bright, almost the tone river water takes in a thunderstorm. Tan skin, tanner freckles.

Alexander thinks, Oh, boy.

“Alexander.”

Silence.

“Alexander.”

“What? Yes, I’m sorry. Dreadfully sorry, my apologies….”

“No,” Laurens says, eyes impossibly wide. “It’s you. God, you look so different. Wait…” He looks around, back down the way they had come. “America?”

“Free,” Hamilton says.

“What an amazing place to Surface in.”

“You died.”

“We both did, Hamilton.”

“Yes, but you died stupidly.” Hamilton raises his head, angry now. “Rice, Laurens? You were killed in battle over a rice dispute?”

“I-- how do you know that? And I should ask you the same question. A duel. That’s the best you could do?”

It’s banter, playful, lovely, and tears well in Hamilton’s eyes. “I-- John!” He takes Laurens by the waist and pulls him close, hears his heartbeat under his chin. “You were dead,” he says. “You were dead and I didn’t know what to do. You died and… it wasn’t good for a long while after that.”

“I’m sorry,” John answers, refusing to let go. “But, Eliza.”

Eliza. Hamilton untangles himself from Laurens’ arms and wipes the moisture from his face. “She Surfaced about a year ago.”

“With whom?”

Hamilton wriggles the ring on his finger this way and that, and the motion attracts Laurens’ attention. 

“Oh.”

“This is where an issue turns into a problem.”

“...I… honestly do not know what to do. I don’t want to cause you trouble, Alexander, I really don’t. I should just--” and Laurens makes to leave, but Hamilton grabs his arm.

“You just can’t leave after what happened right now,” Hamilton says fiercely. “We can work through this, I swear. I did not go willingly, I promise. I didn’t remember her. I do now, but that’s only because… of you.”

“I’ve always believed you,” Laurens says. “You don’t need to worry about it now. But we need to know what to do.”

“Text me,” Hamilton pleads, already reaching in his bag for a pen and paper to write his number. “Don’t tell anyone. You know who I am, yes?”

“Not in this life, no.”

“I’m the damn Secretary of the Treasury. They all know I’m married, but this could rock the presidency.”

Laurens’ eyes cannot possibly have gotten any wider. “Noted,” he says, accepting the paper offered to him.

“But we have time,” Hamilton continues. “I have the day off. Know any good spots?”

“Not particularly,” Laurens replies.

They spend the day talking about the past and the present and what to expect in the future, and then they go home to pretend nothing’s changed.

It’s three days of this charade before everything comes crashing down.

Hamilton arrives home one night to Eliza, breaths breaking, stuttering, a mess. She takes one look at him and turns away. “It’s all over the news,” she says, and flees upstairs.

So he looks.

Claremont knew, somehow, about Laurens, and about Hamilton. He chalked it up to guesswork, to the change in Hamilton’s character over the previous couple of days. To Hamilton’s relief the stories aren’t questioning the relationship between him and Eliza-- well, some are, but they’re not the majority. They’re questioning what comes next. “A treasury secretary we’ve had before. A president we’ve had before. A secretary of state we’ve had before. Why now? What’s going on?” a conspiracy theorist paper questions. Alexander wonders that question himself. “What does this mean for the future of our country?” Asks another.

“Eliza,” he says.

She turns from the bedside window to look at him, eyes bloodshot, wide. “I knew,” she says. “I’m sorry. Before we were married more than 200--” a gasping sob-- “200 years ago. About you and Laurens. Why did I not think to question it? Why was I not able to see that you were hurting for him, in god-awful South Carolina? Why was I so helpless that I couldn’t see past my own naivety?”

“You did,” Alexander says. “You saw straight through me. It’s why I married you.” His hand comes up and holds her cheek in his palm. “But Laurens was dead before I truly started to love you.”

“Then why did you go and get yourself killed?”

“It was a matter of personal honor, Eliza.”

“And is this not a matter of personal honor?” she asks, her skin burning to the touch. “Are you going to get yourself killed too here?”

He couldn’t answer, so he didn’t even dare.

“I love you, Alexander. I always have. But what does this mean for us… for Laurens… for our country?”

“I don’t know,” he says. “But I do know love is love.”

“Is that so?”

“Eliza, do you know what day it is today?”  
“Tuesday.”

“That, but one thing more.”

She looks up at him, not willing to trust anything he says. “What?”

“It’s December 14th.”

It is a morning in early December when he starts to remember.


End file.
